Learn Digital Marketing Skills To Meet Rising Demand

Marie Larsen | February 5, 2014 |

For a number of job seekers, constantly trying to pin down employment can be a frustrating experience, especially difficult for more seasoned professionals who have already been on a certain career track for some time to veer off their current course.However, it could be wise for them to examine employers’ hiring trends and start focusing their efforts on areas where plenty of opportunities are, even if that means these professionals have to venture into uncharted territory. One field to explore is the ever-growing world of digital marketing, whose rapid development has left many businesses strapped for manpower and looking frantically to fill vacancies with viable applicants.

For a number of professionals, digital marketing may be so unknown that they instantly rule it out. However, the beauty of this up-and-coming discipline is that it has evolved so quickly that applicants who are actually well-versed in the ways of this field are few and far between. As more and more companies expand their marketing departments, they will become increasingly desperate to track down rare employee prospects with some sort of experience in digital techniques. If discouraged job seekers are encountering issues when it comes to securing work, then they should contemplate boosting their odds of employment by breaking into this growing field.

Digital realm remains unknown for marketers
According to PR 20/20, digital marketing is still so cutting edge that no one – neither employers nor marketing team members themselves – are fully confident in their capabilities to effectively employ these revolutionary tactics. At the moment, there are so many emerging strategies within this area of marketing that most are still relatively unfamiliar to even the most experienced professionals. With everything from social media advertising to mobile marketing quickly becoming must-have components to any company’s campaigns, the entire landscape of this industry is now starkly different than what it was a matter of years ago, prompting employees to find a way to teach themselves about these techniques.

Marketing professionals are taking various approaches when it comes to gaining the knowledge they need to successfully carry out digital marketing initiatives. The source explained that the majority of professionals are treating their jobs as trial and error educational methods with 85 percent of marketers claiming that they rely on at-work experience as a means of testing the virtual waters and gaining insight into the latest trends in this area.

Marketing professionals starting from square one
A rising number of companies are expected to reassess their advertising strategies, gearing them more toward digital platforms to accommodate consumer preferences. At the moment, only 8 percent of business executives maintain that their teams are strong in all the subdivisions of digital marketing, the Online Marketing Institute reported. Employers want to know that their staff members have a solid foundation already in place before even trying to tackle digital marketing campaigns. Consequently, some professionals are being proactive and completing coursework to guarantee that they know what they are doing and to improve their job security.

Professionals are resorting to all kinds of measures to ensure that they are able to implement innovative marketing tactics that are now in high demand. For example, PR 20/20 revealed that 18 percent of staff members are taking online courses, while another 18 percent are undergoing in-person training to build a solid core for their digital marketing expertise.

Job seekers should jump onboard
Because this is still such a new discipline, there is a relatively level playing field for job seekers, regardless of their background. With the most experienced professionals having to go back to school and study how to use emerging tools to render online marketing efforts profitable, there is ample room on the bandwagon for outsiders. Employers want to hire candidates who have learned to handle a wide variety of techniques, which may ensure that these staff members can actually produce a favorable ROI with the kinds of campaigns their companies need, instead of floundering. For this reason, anyone looking to enter an occupation with more job opportunities could make it his or her mission to learn the latest marketing methods, gaining skills that are in demand and making their job applications more valuable in the eyes of recruiters and hiring personnel.

Marie is a writer for CIOs.com. She has an educational background in languages and literature. She covers IT trends and executive technology management topics for the company.